New Year's Eve
by HopeGale
Summary: Ryoji's finally returned on the last day of 2009, and now SEES will have to give him their decision. Ultimately, it's up to their field leader to have the final say - but he doesn't want to tell them what he's really thinking...


**December 31, 2009 – Thursday, Evening**

Tonight is the night of the full moon. Not only that, but it's also a blue moon, the second full moon within one month.

We've all been anticipating this day ever since he came to us and told us we were all going to die. He offered us a choice: kill him, and allow the Fall to be delayed slightly, at the cost of our memories – or don't, and watch as the world meets its end at the hands of Death herself, Nyx.

Ryoji walks into the dorm with a smile on his face. It has to be the saddest smile I've ever seen. He knows why he's here, we all know why he's here. None of us say a word as he sits down in one of the chairs.

"Hey, long time no see..." He says. His smile fades as he looks up, past all of us towards the staircase.

"Midnight's just around the corner." He then explains that once midnight hits, he'll turn into something incomprehensible, and asks us if we've reached a decision.

No one says anything. Thinking that this means we've still yet to make up our minds, he gets up from the chair and looks at me.

"Okay. I'll be waiting in his room until midnight. Come see me when you have your answer." He starts to walk away when Fuuka calls out his name, stopping him briefly. He turns to look at her, expecting some kind of follow-up, but she doesn't say anything else. His eyes move from her and pass over the rest of SEES.

"Oh, and one more thing." He says not to worry about him, that regardless of our decision he will disappear at midnight – that killing him won't actually hurt him. Junpei looks up from the floor, his eyes saying what his mouth won't – that that has to be a lie, something he refuses to believe. Ryoji then shoots a brief glance at me as he says,

"I'll be waiting." He then walks away from us, going upstairs to my room on the second floor. Another tense moment of silence passes before Mitsuru asks me if I've made my decision.

I don't say anything. I don't want to say what's really on my mind right now. I want to hear what everyone else has to say first.

Mitsuru asks the rest of SEES if they've made their decision. Akihiko decides to speak up first.

"No need to ask me." I wouldn't expect anything less from the group boxer. He was always looking for a good fight, sometimes overlooking the seriousness of the situation in hopes that the enemy would give him a challenge. Once Shinjiro died, he stopped treating our mission like it was a game – which meant he put even more effort into training than before. Of course he would stand and fight Nyx, even if it was impossible to win. I'm not surprised at all by what he says.

Yukari speaks next.

"You know how I feel." Yes, I do. She spent so much time wondering about what Mitsuru was hiding, what the truth of the incident ten years ago really was, especially concerning her late father. Once she finally learned what that truth was, she was never going to back down from our mission. Not even the prospect of an unbeatable foe would change that. She's always been stubborn, but now she's putting that tendency towards a goal that she knows for sure is right.

Junpei cracks a smile, a smile that turns into a grin as he declares his intent.

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't on board." He's come a long way from cowering in the corner at the convenience store. He used to be envious of me, wondering why I was made the field leader and not him. I didn't really ask for that, either – Mitsuru was the one who put me there, citing my proficiency in summoning my Persona as the major reason. Over this past year, he came to accept the idea that he had his own role in how everything was going to play out. He even got to be the hero to Chidori, and now a part of her resides within him forever. So there's no doubt when it comes to him.

Fuuka speaks up after him.

"I'm with the rest of you." She always sounded like the kind of person that just went with the flow, not making any waves or getting into confrontations with anyone. She felt sympathy for the girls that bullied her, and at first I thought she was the living example of a doormat: easily ignored and trampled upon. She's still a kind, gentle person – but now, she doesn't let herself be trampled upon anymore. There's a resolve I can see in her eyes that is just as strong as everyone else's, a resolve to not lay down and die. She's definitely earned my respect.

Ken's reply is curt and short.

"I'm in, too." He hated to be looked down upon because of his age. He despised how people wouldn't take him seriously because he was still in elementary school. He once made it his life's mission to kill the one responsible for his mother's death, but once Shinjiro took that bullet for him – knowing that he wanted to kill him – it threw his whole world out of whack. Eventually, he realized that his revenge was pointless, that it wouldn't have made anything better, and instead used the pain of his suffering to try to see our mission through to the end. He wasn't about to miss this, not for anything.

Aigis follows him.

"I have made my decision as well." I don't know why I had trouble believing in the existence of a sentient robot when I was already in the habit of crawling up an otherworldly tower fighting supernatural creatures during an hour of the day that shouldn't exist. For a while, I wondered just how robotic Aigis really was, and what was the deal behind her need to always be by my side. Of course, she learned the truth in one of the harshest of ways. She almost died learning what was really inside me. Now I understand that although she may not have a body of flesh, blood, and bone, she has a will indistinguishable from that of any other human being. She has a will to protect the ones she loves, no matter what may be on the horizon.

And Koromaru? Well, only Aigis knows what he's saying at any given moment, but she doesn't need to translate this time. It's evident by the look on his face – serious, silent, and unyielding – that he will not let the world his master loved so much go down without a fight.

Mitsuru doesn't outright say it, but her next words more or less confirm her decision anyway.

"Then we're all in agreement, yes?" Akihiko looks at me and gestures towards the staircase.

"Better let him know, then." Everyone else nods, knowing that I'm the one who will have to give Ryoji the final answer. Still, I say nothing. I merely walk away, walk away and don't look back as I head up the staircase to decide our fate.

That walk down to my room at the end of the hallway is a slow one, punctuated by the sounds of my footsteps on the wooden floor. I retrieve my Evoker from its holster and look at it. Should I choose to kill Ryoji, this is the weapon I'll have to do it with. I think about it how it'll go: first, a motion I must have done at least a thousand times by now – raise the gun, pull the trigger, shudder as the shattering of ephemeral glass brings forth my mask, my other self, my Persona. Then, I'll look him straight in the eyes and let Orpheus, the one who's truly been with me ever since all this began, do him in and make it so that none of us remember anything that happened. We'll all go back to being normal high school students, and when the end finally comes we won't even feel it, or realize it's even happening.

He promises us a peaceful death.

I reach the end of the hallway and turn the doorknob, opening the door and seeing Ryoji sitting at the edge of my bed, much like he once did when he was the little boy, Pharos.

"Hey. It's been a long time since we've talked like this in your room. Although back then, I didn't appear in this form, and wasn't known by this name." He looks down at the floor, his yellow scarf covering his mouth as he voices aloud his thoughts about us choosing not to kill him. He's too nice to outright say it's a stupid idea – instead he tells me about how if we let him live, we'll spend our last days living in fear of our unpreventable, inevitable death. He really _does_ think it's better for me to kill him now and at least forget the end is coming, that buying the world a little more time is what I'm supposed to do.

He gets up off of my bed and says,

"Are you still thinking? Or have you already made up your mind?"

I haven't said anything up to this point. Ryoji had mentioned that I'm the only one here right now, which implies that if I wanted to, I could go against the wishes of my friends. It's only a few minutes before this year ends and another begins, the year that the world will end. There was a reason I was silent the whole time downstairs, that I didn't tell Mitsuru or the rest of the group about the decision I've already made.

Now, I speak.

"If I could go back, I'd stop myself from joining them. I wouldn't have gotten involved with all of this, had I known that this was the outcome. I would have been fine just going along with another boring year of school, would have been okay with... being oblivious, until the end. You know I never asked to be a part of all this. So... I'll do it. I will end your life tonight."

Ryoji smiles, all the tension in his body melting away as he hears my words.

"So... you understand." I mimic his smile, except I can't actually look him straight in the eyes. He's legitimately happy, but me... I can't help but feel guilty for wanting to go through with it.

"My friends will never forgive me for this. It's too late, though. It's too late to try and make them see how I feel. For the longest time, I went along with them because it felt like it was the right thing to do, but unlike them, I never really found a reason of my own to keep on fighting. I just did it because... I was there, and they wanted me to be there, so I stayed." Ryoji nods.

"I think that looking to the future is a great way to live. But, that doesn't mean other ways of living are wrong. No one knows which road leads to happiness." In his own way, he's trying to tell me not to feel bad for making this decision. He's saying that just because the rest of SEES all had something to fight for, didn't mean that they were in the right. My own path, the path I never really found due to always following a path that was laid out in front of me rather than one I'd forged myself – that could have brought me more happiness than getting to know all these people only to find out they'll all be dead in a year.

Ryoji's smile is earnest. I can't sense any ironic sadness in it anymore, which just makes it even sadder knowing that these are the last moments I'll ever spend with him. Even though I've only known him for a little over a month, I think I probably have more in common with him than I did with anybody in SEES. All he wanted was to live a normal life, not having to deal with what fate had in store for him. I think that if he could, he'd want to forget about his destiny, too.

"I know it's selfish of me, to throw away all the work everyone downstairs has put in. I know I should've said something before, but I wasn't strong enough to speak my mind. Still, it's not too late. This is where I make my own path, _this_ is me choosing my own destiny for once." I close my eyes for a couple of seconds, taking in and letting out a deep breath to calm myself, to prepare myself for what I'm about to do.

"I'm glad I met you. This must be what it means to 'feel happy'..." I see a tear begin to fall from Ryoji's face, and I know now that even if we're all going to die anyway, and even if I'm going to forget what happened here... at least I'll have followed my heart. I'll have no regrets.

"Thanks for everything."

I pull out my Evoker. I've done this a thousand times before and this is the last time I'll ever have to do it. Ryoji waits silently as I put the gun to my head. Once I do this, there'll be no going back. I wonder briefly if everyone downstairs will hear the sound of me summoning my Persona; they'd hear the sound of shattering glass and know that I've chosen to betray them, that I've chosen to end our mission this way. I imagine all of them running upstairs to try and stop me, but even if they do exactly that, it'll be too late by the time they get to me.

"Let us meet our end... together."

I pull the trigger.

* * *

 **A/N: When I first played Persona 3, I actually chose this ending first, just to see what would happen. I wondered what kind of mindset the protagonist would've had to have had to make that particular decision, and so that's where this one-shot came from. Thanks for reading.**


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